'It will change the art world in a way', Reynolds, 46, said in an interview last month on the porch of his waterfront home in Middletown, New Jersey. 'You’re going to see very specific art movements come out of the schools and develop on their own'.

Reynolds, a trim and intense man with black hair who gets around in a wheelchair, said he thought artists were born with their talents until about four years ago, when he learned from a pair of historical novels that Vincent Van Gogh and Michelangelo struggled to master their craft.

He started trying to teach himself to paint, squeezing in a few hours of practice a week when he wasn’t at Jane Street’s offices at the southern tip of Manhattan. When progress came slowly, he found an instructor who eventually led him to Anthony Waichulis, who was training students to advance from shading charcoal to creating photorealistic paintings of marbles, skulls, people and pets.